In the northeast of India, you'll find an unusual quirk of geology.

A mountainous plateau pushed up by the same continental crash of tectonic plates that created the Himalayas,

and next to it, the vast flat plain of Bangladesh.

As air flows over Bangladesh's hot steaming plains, it's like they're passing through a sauna,

the clouds soak up the steaming moisture until they hit the steep plateau where they're squeezed

through these narrow gaps in the mountains. It's like a wet towel being twisted to every single drop

has fallen. It's the perfect storm for a storm. This region of India is known as the Megalaya

Plateau. Megalaya means the abode of the clouds, and it's one of the wettest regions on the planet.

Some of the villages get as much as 38 feet of rainfall a year,

38 feet of rainfall. The rain comes down in these raging torrents that over time have carved

their way into the limestone, creating these deep canyons overflowing with raging rivers.

For the Kasi tribes, living in one of the wettest places in the world, crossing these torrents

was an act of life and death. And normal bamboo bridges, they just got washed away,

and wooden bridges rot in the humidity. But hundreds of years ago, the Kasi tribes

solved this problem with one of the most beautiful, elegant solutions that you can imagine,

because up there in Megalaya, among the clouds, the bridges aren't built. They're grown.

I'm Dylan Therese, and this is Alasubskira, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places. Today, we're taking a trip through the subtropical jungles

of Northeast India, to visit the living root bridges and the impassioned people who are building

a movement to save them. That's after this.

Oh, boy, actually, my first trip to the root bridges, it was in 2011.

That's Patrick Rogers. He's a travel journalist, and the author of The Green Unknown travels

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